Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) seeks to increase the voice, visibility and validity of the working poor, especially women. The WIEGO Network was founded by 10 activists, researchers and development practitioners who shared a concern that the working poor in the informal economy, especially women, are not understood, valued or supported in policy circles or by the international development community. Today WIEGO is a thriving network of 211 individual and institutional members in over 40 countries.